• @Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    3743 months ago

    How is “someone called” enough evidence to enter peoples homes and arrest them?
    These officers should lose their job,

    • @abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      So (not so) fun fact: Keffals, who was targeted by KiwiFarms for being trans (yes that’s all) and got Swatted. She then went to stay with another streamer (EllenFromNowOn) in Northern Ireland. Just for information sake, Northern Ireland is still a bit rocky security wise, Police there still carry guns on the regular. So when she went there, Ellen called up the police and explained the situation to them (they had never heard of Swatting weirdly enough).

      Sure enough, someone found her flat, posted her address (with a message referencing a Unionist Slogan, Ellen was from the Catholic Community), and sure enough, the police came. Instead of raiding her all guns blasing (which they normally would) they saw the warning, knocked on the door, saw nothing was wrong, called off the squaddies, and came in to basically make sure everything was okay.

      Bare in mind, this was in Northern Ireland, a place where the Police still drive Armored cars and have regular riots, and they handled this better than the Police in London, Ontario.

      • finley
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        1683 months ago

        As an American, I read this, and it made me me want to cry

        • @Elaine@lemm.ee
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          1023 months ago

          As an American reading this, I kept wondering when the mayhem and death would occur.

          • @800XL@lemmy.world
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            323 months ago

            As an American I wondered when the police would be made the victims and the actual victim would either get shot or arrested and blamed.

            • Iapar
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              333 months ago

              As an American I got shot while reading this in my Home.

        • @Zink@programming.dev
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          703 months ago

          As an American, this line short circuited my brain:

          Police there still carry guns on the regular

          I live in a quiet but growing suburban town that’s closer to rural areas than the nearest city. When I walk my kid to elementary school (how European of us, lol) the police officer working as a crossing guard for the kids still has their gun, taser, bulletproof vest, and all their other gear on.

          And it’s not a school-specific thing. You just never see cops without their weapons here. Armed and armored is just part of the uniform, essentially.

          • @vala@lemmy.world
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            63 months ago

            The bullet proof vests really get me. They are so heavy and unlikely to be nessesary but some cops wear them ever day just to LARP.

            • @deafboy@lemmy.world
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              23 months ago

              One could argue the vests are like seat belts in a car. You don’t need them 99.9% of the time.

              • @vala@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Ironic because it’s not unusual for cops to not wear seatbelts but they are more likely to die in a single vehicle accident than a gun fight.

      • @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Yeah the cops on this side of the pond are crazy, and their leadership staff tend to fall a lot further into the “complete psycho” side of the human spectrum.

        Thanks for sharing that story though - the dichotomy is absolutely fucking wild, especially considering we’re talking about Northern Ireland.

        • @tpihkal@lemmy.world
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          93 months ago

          How often are police tipped off before hand that someone is anticipating being SWATed though?

          That situation is practically unheard of so it’s impossible to know how police in the US would respond.

          • @gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            Yeah, that’s definitely a quandary. But in the case of people who know they might be (or have been previously) targeted with that sort of bullshit, it’s a prudent precaution in the US (and Canada too, evidently)

        • @orcrist@lemm.ee
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          173 months ago

          In the US, property records are public records. Easy to find someone’s address online if you know their full name and the county they own property in.

          Go try it!

        • Oh there’s several ways, especially if you have poor opsec. People used to raid people’s twitch accounts and bring down their internet connections by looking for their username on Skype which had a vulnerability which they could use to find a person’s IP.

          For swatters on the otherhand, they tend to either know the streamer themselves or they tend to be groups like KiwiFarms who are a lot more organised and do a lot of research and detective work, like looking at the video, looking for usernames elsewhere, looking for emails, and looking for location clues. It’s really fucked up. They found Keffels’s Motel by the sheets in her room. It’s bad enough if you do not think about these things and just have sloppy OpSec, but even if you do, they can still find you.

          • @barsquid@lemmy.world
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            13 months ago

            The sheets in the motel room, that’s insane. A while back I read something like a stalker caught a reflection in someone’s eye at a train station, that’s horrific enough. But I would have thought being indoors is relatively safe. It is like impossible to put out video content at all without being vulnerable.

        • @steeznson@lemmy.world
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          43 months ago

          I mean, there were riots last month and then the last time I recall riots before then was 2019 when the journalist was shot. There might be more inbetween I’ve forgotten but a cadence of 5 years is more than the ~10 year cadence for mainland UK (which is culturally very similar). Sectarian tensions have died down in the past 20 years - my sister is currently in Belfast and loving it - but they still exist and have deep roots.

      • @steeznson@lemmy.world
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        83 months ago

        Keffals has a bit of a bad stink around her online presence. I think she claimed to be posting sex hormones to underage people at one point, without any kind of medical license. One of the ecelebs on the weirder side of the terminally online subculture.

        Obviously no one should ever be swatted. Wanted to mention that she is somewhat controversial though as opposed to a regular activist.

    • @MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Well, I guess if someone calls and says you have kidnapped a little girl and that they have seen you with a gun, the police can’t take a chance that it’s hoax. All phone numbers that call the police should be logged and if it turns out to be a hoax, traced, so people who make hoax calls can be arrested and prosecuted.

      • @Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        653 months ago

        If they enter his home, and there is no evidence of a crime, then what is the basis for the arrest?
        One thing is to investigate the truth of a call, another is to act on it as if it’s verbatim truth.

      • @Bitrot
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        473 months ago

        They are logged, but swatting people get around it. They are suspicious “looking” calls, but so are bomb threats.

        Swatting is pretty much always a blocked number to a non-emergency line. If they are traced it is typically one of those free online voip services. It takes work and access to really get from A to B, which is why it only happens when there are awful results.

        In the US at least, 911 gets special access and calling it will always get you to your local dispatch (unless you have voip with the wrong account address). Non-emergency is just a normal phone number. If someone wants to call from out of the area or hide their number, non-emergency is how they have to do it. This is suspicious because in a real situation like “I just shot my dad” or whatever they say, nobody is taking time to look up non-emergency.

    • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      553 months ago

      Someone calls an emergency number and says “My husband has a knife and he’s threatening to kill me!”

      Should the operator say “nothing we can do until you provide provide me with some evidence, ma’am” ?

      • @Taleya@aussie.zone
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        213 months ago

        Lmao the cops take four hours to send someone then say she was just being dramatic in that scenario

        • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          53 months ago

          Well the cops might be taking pics of a dead body the next day. So then they could say “yeah we probably should’ve responded to that one last night, but we just couldn’t risk that it might’ve been one of the 0.01% of these calls where it turns out it’s an internet swatting thing.”

          • @Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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            -73 months ago

            Yep. I guess there are no other possible methods of conducting a police investigation than your suggested method. Pack it in, boys. Space Cowboy’s got it all figured out for us!

              • @Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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                13 months ago

                Here’s an extremely easy one. When in doubt, just knock on the goddamned door and talk with someone instead of kicking the door in, tossing flash-bangs and jamming rifles in people’s faces. Knock… and talk. SWAT shouldn’t be entering unless there’s a barricaded suspect.

                • @TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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                  13 months ago

                  The first thing is what they did. They knocked on the door, they spoke. At one point he was detained when they had a look about and then they apologised and left.

                  There was no SWAT (this is Germany so technically it would be a SEK team I guess), there was no flashbangs (why would police even have those?), there were no rifles in faces.

            • @flashgnash@lemm.ee
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              33 months ago

              If someone’s in imminent danger sending police capable of protecting them from said danger seems like a reasonable idea

        • JackbyDev
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          123 months ago

          That’s how swatting works though. They don’t just call 911 and say “send police to this place” lol.

    • If this is legal then it’s a giant gaping loophole in the system. Not just because it’s easy to harass someone but because it sounds incredibly easy for a cop to call in an “anonymous tip” on someone they suspected of wrongdoing but had no evidence to support it. I’m almost positive the Supreme Court has even held that evidence that was gathered in the course of raiding the wrong building is legal as it’s an “honest mistake”.

    • @mbirth@lemmy.ml
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      343 months ago

      In the comments the victim said that the police said it were two emails they got. Not even a call.

    • UnfortunateShort
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      213 months ago

      He probably wasn’t arrested. It sounds like the police handcuffed him while checking whether he was indeed alone and then asked about what he was doing at his computer. After he explained, they asked him to turn off the stream, at which point I would assume he was freed again.

      I assume they went on to explain the situation and then questioned him. If there is no evidence of any crime, they will just take his personals so they can contact him on any development. He is the victim of a crime after all.

      • Pika
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        3 months ago

        Man the audacity of that though, they came into his house, interrupted his evening and then asked him to turn off the stream that he’s doing. All while he didn’t actually do anything wrong.

        The entitlement is insane.

      • @lily33@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I don’t know - but I’m willing to get the instances where people were saved weren’t calls from anonymous voip numbers.

        • @tabular@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Not sure why your intuition would go there, I can imagine situations where the caller would feel/be threatened if they didn’t remain anonymous. After hearing about people suing for helping them in emergency situations and police abusing people’s rights to get evidence then if I felt I had to report something I’d want to remain anonymous.

      • Possibly linux
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        -43 months ago

        If there is a serious situation like human trafficking then it makes more sense. Also if they might blow down the door in a drug bust

        • @possiblylinux127 @tabular , well, regarding a married couple I know, the wife was away taking care of her granddaughter for a bit, came back to her husband having sketchy people in their home while she was gone. The wife wanted the police to sweep the house for drugs and alleged these people probably brought drugs in their home. The police said there was nothing they can do. Lovely double standards.
          Edit: Also, you could smell the pot off the people easily. They were definitely stoned.

    • @orcrist@lemm.ee
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      103 months ago

      The legal standard in the U.S. is if there’s exigent circumstances. Detailed 911 calls are typically sufficient to meet that standard. Not always.

      Right now, we cannot tell if the officers did anything unlawful. Need the call recording or call logs, plus the body cameras.

      (I think the exigent circumstances standard is BS, easily abused, but that is the current law of the land.)

        • @orcrist@lemm.ee
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          43 months ago

          I know. And many of the comments are coming from the US, so I’m trying to help American readers see what US law would dictate in a similar situation, because they might have instincts that are inconsistent with US law.

          • @Grimpen@lemmy.ca
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            23 months ago

            The police also knocked and only entered after he answered it sounded like. While certainly armed and probably prepared for something wild, they didn’t force entry with guns at the ready.

            Once again, mostly comparing to videos of US police interactions, which is kind of weird as a non-USian commenting on a German police interrogation. Would be curious to see an “audit the audit” type review of this.

        • @Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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          43 months ago

          Cuffed would be more like detained. Not free to leave, because they’re actively investigating, but no charges are being presented. Literally just placed in cuffs while the police do their snooping.

    • This is such an obviously dumb take its unbelievabe anyone would come up with it. Ofcourse the cops need to respond to a call of someone claiming to be assaulted/abused/murdered. There is no issue with this at all. The issue that CAN arise is that bad police training might lead to someone getting actually hurt in a raid like this. But thats an entirely different issue.

        • @chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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          -13 months ago

          If you have reason to believe someone is in mortal danger, your response shouldn’t be to mail a letter giving them 30 days to respond.

          You send police to the scene where they secure the potential suspect and make sure there’s nothing going on.

    • @delirious_owl@discuss.online
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      3 months ago

      To make more money for the weapons manufacturers.

      SWAT teams didn’t always exist. Many would argued they should not exist. But if they no longer exited, police would spend less money in military style equipment.

      Police don’t care if SWATing is harming people. They just need to keep their expenses high, and SWAT teams are great for that.

    • Quack Doc
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      -263 months ago

      I strongly disagree with this. Police should be given permission to do these things. Very rapidly with little evidence so long as they’re handled right.

      In fact, this is one of those cases where it looks like it was handled right. He went to the door, came in, and it sounds like they were invited in. He was not arrested immediately and thrown to the ground. Yes it sucks, But there are very much very many cases where it is absolutely necessary.

      Rather than them not being able to do it, I absolutely believe they should be allowed to do it. Just be more strict on how it’s handled.

      • @Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        183 months ago

        Maybe this was done properly, but I was thrown off by the handcuff bit, here it’s not normal to handcuff somebody who cooperates.

        • Quack Doc
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          -253 months ago

          To be clear, handcuffing does not mean you’re being arrested, it means you’re being detained. It’s not about them getting you ready to take you away. It’s about them verifying that you’re not a threat.

          Whatever the claim was, whatever the claim was. Being bogus obviously, but it was bad enough that the police felt they had the need to break in and clear before proceeding any further, which means they were probably told he was a threat.

          I always felt like people put too much stock into being handcuffed or not, yet it sucks. I’ve been handcuffed before, In a similar but not nearly as severe circumstance.

          It’s not meant as a punishment. It is just protecting the officers who arrive on scene because yes, people do cooperate and then they pull out of knife or gun and try to kill the first responders.

          • @PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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            373 months ago

            It is a punishment in the form of public humiliation, taking your autonomy, and dehumanizing you. People will automatically assume you’ve done something wrong if you’re in handcuffs.

            • Quack Doc
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              -403 months ago

              If you feel humiliated because you have been placed in handcuffs, That’s really just a personal issue. How is it a form of public humiliation? It’s a safety precaution. Anyone who doesn’t understand that safety comes first should be the ones feeling humiliated.

              I myself have never once felt dehumanized, nor humiliated being placed in handcuffs. Yeah people will assume you have done wrong, that sucks, but people will really quickly change their minds when you aren’t put head first into the back of a cop car. Personally I would feel 100% more humiliated if an officer looked at me, and thought he didn’t need to cuff me :/

                • sunzu2
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                  173 months ago

                  These people don’t understand that they are arguing against their own self interest.

                  The state is justified for acting on fake calls… Sucks to suck peasants.

                  Sure buddy, there is no way this system would be abused 🤡

                • Quack Doc
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                  -173 months ago

                  I don’t mind being called a bootlicker. Police have saved my life before, and they’ve saved the lives of people I deeply care about. I have also seen policemen, who have helped peoplle out get attacked. I genuinely hope you are never put in a poosition where police have to save your life, But if they do one day, I hope you’ll change your mind.

                  • @Count042@lemmy.ml
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                    3 months ago

                    I’ve been held at gun point three times in my life.

                    Every time I was not doing anything illegal or even suspicious. I am white, not that that should make a difference, but we all know it does. EDIT: to be clear, I’m saying cops are racist, and unjustly target minorities.

                    Each of those three times the person holding the gun was a power tripping asshole cop.

                    I have been in several dangerous situations where a cop happened by, and just kept on going.

                    I already live in a world where the police will not be there for me when I need them, and they solely present a danger with no benefit.

                    You want to see people that are truly guided by a desire to help people? Go to a fire station or a hospital. Cops are not heroes, just assholes that want power over others.

          • @octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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            223 months ago

            I always felt like people put too much stock into being handcuffed or not

            Too much stock? Your bodily autonomy is being removed, under overt threat of further violence if you resist. It’s humiliating if seen in that condition because of assumptions people make. For someone who has done nothing wrong why the fuck wouldn’t they be indignant?

            I’ve been handcuffed before, In a similar but not nearly as severe circumstance.

            Me too, and I knew that they at least had a reason to think I was up to no good (I was not), it’s not the same as literally minding your own business in your own home and having them barge in. Not really apples to apples to this situation here.

            • Quack Doc
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              -243 months ago

              Too much stock? Your bodily autonomy is being removed, under overt threat of further violence if you resist. It’s humiliating if seen in that condition because of assumptions people make. For someone who has done nothing wrong why the fuck wouldn’t they be indignant?

              Perhaps if you don’t understand what police officers go through, I could see it. People do make assumptions yes, but those assumptions go away pretty damn quickly when people see you being uncuffed too.

              Me too, and I knew that they at least had a reason to think I was up to no good (I was not), it’s not the same as literally minding your own business in your own home and having them barge in. Not really apples to apples to this situation here.

              Perhaps I’m guilty of omission, if you were cuffed and thrown to the floor for no reason, I could understand being angry, however if you are explained why you are being detained which as I said, I think this case was handled right, can’t say I understand german so perhaps i am mistaken, there is no reason why you should feel humiliated.

              every time I have witnessed, or was handcuffed myself, the reasons were always explained, specifically in my case, I was told I was being detained and restrained for the safety of the first responders.

              • @octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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                153 months ago

                I don’t disagree with you about this specific case, I was reacting to your “people put too much stock in being cuffed.” Removing another person’s bodily autonomy under direct threat of violence is just another day for police, but for the rest of us it’s a pretty fucking traumatic thing to be on the other end of.

                Perhaps if you don’t understand what police officers go through, I could see it.

                I understand they can pick a different job if it’s too much for them, and that they knew what the job entailed when they picked the career in the first place.

                • Quack Doc
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                  -203 months ago

                  Removing another person’s bodily autonomy under direct threat of violence is just another day for police, but for the rest of us it’s a pretty fucking traumatic thing to be on the other end of.

                  I don’t think it’s traumatic at all if the police handle it right, as I predicated earlier. Police in most cases don’t need to throw you to the ground, don’t need to scream at you etc. It does happen yes, and it absolutely shouldn’t happen unless there is an extremely good reason for it. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m specifically saying, if the police handle it right, it’s not traumatizing nor humiliating

                  • @octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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                    And I’m saying, even if they are polite, they are polite because I comply. If I don’t really want to be in handcuffs right then - doesn’t matter. If I’ve got an important appointment or was about to leave to pick up my child from school before police arrived to “make sure I’m not a threat” - doesn’t matter.

                    Your options at that point, even as someone who has done nothing wrong are comply, or expect violence. THAT is inherently traumatic.

          • @Buffalox@lemmy.world
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            163 months ago

            Yes, but I still don’t believe an anonymous caller should have this kind of weight. If it’s not anonymous however it should.
            But then there should also be a possibility of the caller facing charges on an obviously false accusation.
            So the caller needs to be verified before going to extremes.

            • Quack Doc
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              -73 months ago

              There are lots of times when you need to act on anonymity. For one, many people who report crimes that happen to others they witness, if it has happened to them, will absolutely refuse to give out any identifiable information, especially if those crimes are… sexual in nature.

              Are you saying that if someone like this reports said crime, the police should not act on it? I strongly disagree, I do think officers need to be more forth coming about why something is happening, and why someone is being treated X way, but I still believe 100% that officers should act on it.

      • borari
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        3 months ago

        If someone starting swatting the extended family of local police chiefs I’d be willing to bet that even the police unions would be calling for an end to these types of raids, regardless of how they were handled.

        • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          23 months ago

          What do estimate the percentage of these calls are some internet loser swatting someone rather than it being a legitimate report of domestic violence? You may be underestimating the number of actual domestic violence situations where the police need to intervene be a few orders of magnitude.

        • Quack Doc
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          -13 months ago

          That’s quite possible, probably even quite likely. It doesn’t make it right.